Faded Colors
by Aurora-Borealis Coyote
Summary: Sloth knows she can't care that it's October third. She's come to terms with not being meant to care.


**Well, here's another 10/3 story. Except I took the alternate route- Ed and Al had to remember, while Sloth wasn't ever even at that point.**

She's just getting used to days and months and weeks, but not yet years. A year seems far away- not forever, not an instant, but as if she would never be able to understand a measurement of existence. Not that she really needs to- the others have gone on longer than she has. She works with Pride, and he's been around for nearly sixty years. Envy says he's four hundred.

She can imagine living for that long, in a way. She can't possibly ever comprehend what she'd do in four hundred years- after all, she knows from what she's told (although she hasn't been told to do much quite yet, and she gets the feeling from the way Master Dante wrinkles her nose and looks away that there's no point in letting her hopes rise high enough to fall significantly) then all of this working and lying and controlling isn't going to last much longer. "The time for us is coming soon," Dante had said, her gaze focusing a bit too long to be normal.

Her desk and office is quiet, far from the ornate mansion that would loom over her, and it's in the city, which she doesn't mind- she can fit right in if she puts herself in the minds of others, like the soldiers who she sees every day, the ones who think she's just another person doing a job to further strengthen and empower the country. Like the rest of them.

But she's not, and she figures if she's lying, then so is this country- she's new, but if this country is just a way of fooling the people within its borders, and if it's just another object to help drawing power from its sources, then it's just as false as she is, she realizes- or, no, she thinks, she can't realize something that doesn't surprise her.

She wonders what it would take to surprise her. It's in her nature for her to be this way, she was told, this way and never any other way- surprise and shock are foreign emotions, she knows, strong emotions can never weaken her- that's for humans, and she's no human. She wouldn't know how to define a soul anyway. From what she knows of them, and she doesn't think her knowledge counts for much, but she still knows that it can't be completely defined in words.

It's a slow day at work. But she doesn't mind. She's already cleaned her desk, which wasn't too difficult- she finds cleaning relaxing, as if it's a perfect way to fix a disaster, solve a problem with her own two hands. Perfect control.

She knows what her hands can do- are told to do- otherwise.

The calendar reads October Third. The seasons, all four of them, have shown their true colors to her by now- it's been around a year since she woke up, if her memory is correct (it may be correct, but it's not reliable, no more than the date). Summer has not-so-recently ended, which she didn't mind- the heat was too stifling, as if the air's thickness was a test for her lungs; and before that was spring, which seemed irregular; and before that was winter, which was almost too quiet and soft and fragile to be real. And the fires season she ever knew was autumn.

_(October, right?_)

It's been about a year. It doesn't feel strange, not after hearing how old the others are, but there's a feeling she can't quite place.

She supposes she's not meant to explain her feelings.

But she can't understand entirely why she can't quite put her finger on _some _thought that's just out of her reach, why it seems like some memories have just erased themselves just as she's trying to call them back, why it seems like there's a lot she'll never know for sure.

She's felt that way before, though. It must not be important, she decides, there are stranger aspects to her existence- and she looks out the window to the coloring leaves.

The light hits the glass at an angle that almost burns her eyes, and she looks away, back to her desk. The calendar's numbers stare at her, vapidly and expectantly. (_what do you have to give?_) Momentarily stunned, she puts the calendar in the desk drawer.

She resolves, it would be better for herself to understand that it doesn't matter.

_Xx_

By now, she doesn't know whether to feel more like Juliet Douglas, whose life and name and mannerisms seem intrinsic, or like Sloth, who she feels some days as if doesn't know and feels some days like she's all that she'll ever know how to be. Others have held that name in the past, over these centuries- she's supposed to be the last. But after thinking about it, she doesn't believe there was ever supposed to be more than a first. And sometimes, she thinks even Dante doesn't believe in the plans.

She can feel that she'll be the last, somehow, anyway. It's the way Envy seems more forced, the way Lust talks about being human, the way she can tell that she's not the only one who sees that King Bradley is just a transparent face in a glass nation.

She looks out the window, away from the stacks of paperwork on her desk. Some days, she barely pays attention to her work- it's not really hers unless someone's watching; she's not Juliet Douglas until someone believes she is. If she is or isn't convincing, she's never asked, but she knows she's useful.

The leaves are reddening again, as they always do this time of year. Not that she's an expert. This isn't her four hundredth time, after all, or her five hundredth, or her first. The seasons aren't that unusual, she decides- just another part of nature that's never supposed to be changed or questioned.

She looks back at her papers, signing health documents and release forms. She could blur the inked words until the point of invisibility, as if nobody had ever even thought of them, she knows, but she also knows she's not really as powerful as she seems compared to a regular human.

One of the papers, she notices, has to do with alchemy- probably to do with those State Alchemists. She examines closer, seeing the design of circles and symbols, intricate as she's seen-

She reads the words "human transmutation", and freezes for a minute, until she realizes that her knuckles have turned white and she's gripping the paper so hard it's almost tearing at the edge.

She rapidly signs _Juliet Douglas_, mechanically writes _October Third, 1913_, so fast she can barely read it afterwards, narrowing her eyes and hurrying to the next paper to sign, but she realizes that she has such a terrible headache that she can barely focus.

Walking to the window, she opens it to get more air, inhaling in cold breaths.

It's not until much later in the day, long after she's walked back to her desk, long after she's shut the window and returned to work, that she realizes a leaf has blown onto her desk; not a deep red color of fresh blood, but a withered brown, casting its shadow over one document, but still revealing its spindling drawing of a transmutation circle.

_Xx_

She hates the manor, but she'll never say it, she's not even sure she's been somewhere she loves- she's imagined before a calm house in the country, but it makes her confused and she's known for a long time exactly why.

She's come to terms with hate.

Too much has happened, or not enough- either way, she's learned by now to not be unsatisfied with an absence of fulfillment.

Soon, Dante's told her, she has to go to Liore, out in the desert. Wrath is to come fight alongside her, but some days he leaves and doesn't come back, and some days she wishes she could just run away; Lust still is gone and she genuinely, resentfully wishes the best for her; Pride still is doing all he can to lie to the fool's gold nation.

The high ceilings of the manor seem to be positioned to collapse on her, the marble floors seem to freeze under her feet. She couldn't make any of it fade away if she turned all of herself into water, and for a moment she imagines what she could do if she could make her mind tangible, use her _strong emotions_ and let it burn this whole mansion down to ashes (equivalent exchange? What did she ever have to lose, anyway?), heated flames that wither its prey the way the cold withers the trees, the way her memory has slowly gotten more burdensome- but she knows she can't undo what's already been made.

Today, she has been told, is almost time to set in the next step of the plan she knows can't satisfy anyone anymore.

It's October Fourth- already? Not soon enough? She can't care. Yesterday, she knew she couldn't, and the day before, and every moment.

Not every day can last forever, after all, and after a while, nobody remembers, she supposes.

The leaves turn darker and the sky becomes greyer, and the air more frozen sharp, but whether time goes by too fast or not fast enough, she doesn't think she'll ever be able to know.


End file.
